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Today I don't want to live for,
I want to live.
The only way for me to live is to have no way. My only habit should be to have none. Because I did it this way before is not sufficient reason to do it this way today.
If I work toward an end, meantime I am confined to a process.
There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorise, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach... To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just one thing in life, would kill off large parts of me.
There are no absolutes for something as relative as a human life. There are no rules for something as gentle as a heart.
My trouble is I analyse life
Instead of live it.
Eloquence is sometimes lyrical, sometimes powerful, but unless it includes love, unless the words caress the heart as well as the ear, it is a beauty that inspires but does not heal.
It's not that we fear the place of darkness but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light
Unless I accept my faults, I will unquestionably doubt my virtues.
And if I lack the grounds to feel guilty over my own emotions, how can I criticise yours?
To lie is to consciously communicate a false impression, and this can be done with words that are literally correct. What I want are words that reflect my heart, not my cleverness.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing my own intuition.
I am not interested so much in what I do with my hands or words as what I do with my heart. I want to live from the inside out, not the outside in.
If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write.
I need solitude like I need food and rest, and like eating and resting, solitude is most healing when it fits the rhythm of my needs. A rigidly scheduled aloneness does not nourish me.
The criticism that hurts the most is the one that echoes my own self-condemnation.
I have the choice of being right or being human
Interests change. Friendship based on mutual interests is doomed. Real friendship is an unshakeable faith in what was once truly seen, no matter how recently or long ago.
If I went wanting to be a friend rather than to have one, my want could not be frustrated.
An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.
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Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernal. I can take them out and look at them, they fit in books, they lead me down that narrow way. And in the morning they are there. Ideas are straight–
But the world is round, and a messy mortal is my friend.
Come walk with me in the mud. . . .
[END]
The final one contains the final words of the book, and I had to separate them from the rest. So beautiful. This book goes straight into my top faves, when I get round to updating the list.
I can't tell you how exciting this post is. I'm nothing short of ecstatic that your appreciation for Hugh Prather has run so deep... this is exactly how I feel every time I read 'Notes' or 'I Touch the Earth' (my copies are falling apart from overuse, ack!)
ReplyDeleteReading Hugh is like coming home to an old friend and warming your hands by his living room hearth. =)
It is I who must thank you for pointing me in this direction. It's taken more than a year, but I've read three of the five you have recommended, and loved them all. The other two I expect to be just as awesome.
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